Over the next few months Phoronix.com will be under going a slight face lift as we begin work on the next major revision of the Phoronix CMS (PHXCMS) system. Most of the changes will be under the hood, but there will be some code cleanup and minor changes to the interface. A few new site features are also in the works. We are in the process of polling our readers to see what areas they would like improved when it comes to the site layout and features. A thread has been setup over at the Phoronix Forums so that you may post your comments and suggestions.
Today, Phoronix is proud to say that Phoronix LCH has finally turned into a reality.
Phoronix LCH is designed to be a community-driven indexing system for computer hardware under Linux. This system allows you to post Linux information on hardware as well as sharing your own personal experiences when it comes to Linux compatibility. You are also able to browse and search the database for other hardware as well. This is designed to make it much more effortless when deciding what Linux compatible hardware to go with during your next upgrade. Phoronix LCH is not distribution specific, and allows comments from all versions of Linux. Phoronix LCH is to spread what works and what doesn't when it comes to hardware under Linux.
You can check out Phoronix LCH @ //www.phoronix.com/lch/
Happy Independence Day to all of our American readers, as well as the successful job with today's NASA Shuttle lunch. Have a safe (and enjoyable) holiday. We will be back later this week with more exciting content in the mean time feel free to check out our forums.
Yet another Phoronix project is starting to take form and will hopefully be officially unveiled towards the end of July or early August... Forum users simply get a sneak-peak for now. We don't believe anything like this has yet existed, so please bear with us as we work out the initial bugs and begin to add additional features. For the time being, this project is being referred to as "Phoronix LCH"....
Phoronix LCH Preview
Phoronix LCH Description
Coming out almost two months earlier then was originally anticipated is the long-awaited Phoronix Forums. Yes, they are finally here! We have expanded upon our leading Linux-based hardware reviews and articles to now include more community involvement through the use of our brand spankin' new web-forums. While we will classify our forums as Beta until early July, when they shall be officially announced, they are ready for public testing today. During this time, we welcome any user feedback -- positive or negative -- about our forums so that we are able to prepare the appropriate changes in a timely fashion. We anticipate that this will shortly turn into one of the largest Linux-centric enthusiast hardware forums. Feel free to check out our forums, sign-up, and provide any feedback.
The Phoronix Forums can be found @ //www.phoronix.net/forums/
This morning, June 5, 2006, marks the two year anniversary that Phoronix was created. If it weren't for all of our loyal penguin readers, this site would have never been possible. Thanks to all, and we hope to keep up the quality GNU/Linux articles, as well as expanding our reaches this coming year. If you are curious as to what Phoronix means, the definition is here. As always, we welcome any reader feedback and comments on our contact page.
In an effort to get a better understanding for the current state of ATI's proprietary fglrx Linux display drivers, and to provide the alternative OS community with more facts as well as in-house comments, Phoronix has today announced the creation of redblog.phoronix.com. This blog will focus on the Phoronix Editor-In-Chief, Michael Larabel, personally evaluating ATI's current Linux drivers for 50-days -- simply think of it as an ATI Linux review for an extended amount of time.
While over a year ago the quality of the red's Linux display drivers could be refuted, they certainly have improved by near light-years when it comes to their installation strategy, performance, bug issues, and variety of cards supported -- among other areas. But how well does this ATI experience come first hand? Are gamers and computer enthusiasts alike now ready to accept ATI's current Linux display drivers for prime-time action?
For those GNU/Linux users with proprietary display drivers, you already know what all the fuss is about but for the rest the preface and introduction for this blog can be read here and here respectively.
This blog can be found at redblog.phoronix.com, and be sure to tune into its RSS feed for the latest commentary.
For all of the countless emails received from users asking what Phoronix means, and all of the other similar inquiries, here it is... The word Phoronix was derived by Michael Larabel back in 2004 when he had found phoronix.com. Phoronix is a combination of phoro- and *NIX. Phoro- means movement or direction, while *NIX of course is referred to as modern-day UNIX-like systems... With that, Phoronix means UNIX/Linux movement. Just a tid-bit of knowledge for today.
As of early morning (EST) on Wednesday, May 10, 2006, we have received reports that one of our image servers is not operating. As a result, some of the content images on Phoronix.com may be failing to load at this time. We expect to have the issue under control within the next couple of hours, and all operations should return to normal shortly. Sorry for any inconvenience and be sure to check back soon. EDIT: It appears operations have now returned to normal. If any users continue to experience any image loading problems, please be sure to contact us. Thanks.
We at Phoronix would like to welcome our newest sponsor -- OSDisc. OSDisc not only provides Linux CD/DVDs but they also provide different BSDs. Some of the features that this electronic retailer provides is free shipping worldwide on orders over $20, 24/7 customer service, and a professional quality of service. We recommend you check out OSDisc.
We at Phoronix would like to welcome our newest sponsor -- LinuxCD.org. At LinuxCD, they sell a TON of different distribution CDs for Linux as well as for FreeBSD and Solaris. These CDs are also accompanied by applications and Linux training manuals. LinuxCD can be found at www.linuxcd.org.
For those of you noticing any disruptions with the loading of Phoronix images, we are in the process of resolving these issues. As previously mentioned, this past week we had migrated our imaging system to a new server and it appears the issues today are still a few of the issues being resolved with this move. We expect the images to re-appear soon at their full speed (right now they are loading bloody slow), if you encounter any other difficulties please don't hesitate to contact us. Sorry for any inconveniences. Update: We have received word from our administrator that the image service may not return until approximately 10:00PM EST on March 20. Upon the service returning to normal, we will continue with our usual news and coverage on this Fedors 5 launch day.
To better cope with our growing needs, and expectations for the near future, we have just established another Phoronix server. All of our news and article images will be placed on this new server (powered by the fine folks over at 1&1) to add yet another level of redundancy as well as substantially speeding up the load time of all pages at phoronix.com. With our previous implementation, the image quality at times would be degrading due to on-the-fly features that were added to the images. This new server, however, should be able to cope with this image processing much more efficiently -- thus what this means is a greatly improved image quality and should load noticeably faster. These new improvements should be all enacted this weekend and will affect ALL future and previously published Phoronix articles. Any and all issues should have already been worked out in this new imaging system, however, if you come across any problems in the articles (i.e. image missing, improperly sized, poor quality) please contact Phoronix. Any other questions or concerns can also be directed to the contact page (Reader comments are always welcome.). As always, the article images can be clicked on for viewing a higher resolution version. We hope to roll out some additional site features at the Linux-based Phoronix in the near future.
With many closely tuning into our NVIDIA 1.0-8751 and GeForce 7600/7900 coverage, its a good time to remind all of you that the latest-and-greatest Phoronix news is available via RSS (Really Simple Syndication). There are two independent channels, one for our Linux news (in this area entitled "Linux News", which you are reading right now) and then one for all of our official articles when it comes to software and hardware. The two RSS feeds can be viewed from here. Tuning into both of these channels will ensure the latest Linux hardware/software news available.
We are also in the process of looking for additional web-servers and related web offerings in order to expand our Linux reach and free content. If you happen to own a data center or hosting firm feel free to shoot us an email. As always, we welcome any contributions from our readers whether it be a monetary donation (100% of which is used to help cover operating expenses of Phoronix.com; PayPal accepted) or simply a few words of feedback. Alternatively, we also accept freelance editorials and related articles from our open-source audience. Any questions or comments can be directed to our contact page.
With the improved news integration at Phoronix, with our re-vamped site layout that had premiered last week, we have created a new RSS channel. The Phoronix Hardware/Software Linux News can now be obtained through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) using //www.phoronix.com/rss/rss_news.php. As always, our Phoronix article feed will remain active at //www.phoronix.com/rss/rss.php. For those unfamiliar with RSS, more information is available at Wikipedia.
Another week has passed us by, and for this upcoming week, we will have a thorough performance look at the latest version of Cedega (v5.1) that was recently released as well as a performance look at Fedora Core 4/Fedora Core 5. In addition, we will have our usual wobble of hardware previews and reviews. However, for this past week we began with a look at the DFI Infinity nForce4 Ultra. This motherboard boasts a single PCI Express x16 interface, Socket 939 with support for AMD Athlon 64 X2 and Opteron 100 processors, and a host of DFI innovations that have been adopted from their LAN Party series. As the week before we had a article on AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet, we proceeded with an Enhanced Intel SpeedStep (EIST) investigation. Certainly the technology from Geyserville and original SpeedStep have improved to make the mobile computing experience, as well as desktops, more pleasurable. On the software side of things, we had covered Nexuiz v1.5 and Berry Linux v0.67. This morning, we also posted a plethora of screenshots from a fresh compilation of GNOME v2.14 (v2.13.91) that was built from Fedora Core 5 Rawhide. Ending things off, this week we also launched our new Phoronix site interface.
Over the last several months we at Phoronix have been working on a massive revision to the site. Well, today's the day, and everything should be set to roll! In addition to an entirely revamped layout, much of the code-base for our core content management system and back-end has been cleaned up, along with the initial formation for some new site features which we hope to roll out in the very near future. The color scheme has also been revamped, while keeping the same overall effect, as well as several other graphical improvements. As far as the browser compatibility goes, the site has been thoroughly tested under Mozilla Firefox v1.0.7/v1.5.0 as well as Epiphany and Konqueror. Under Macintosh OS X, we used Safari and for Windows there are several versions of Opera (including v9.0 Tech Preview 2) and Internet Explorer. We can report at this time that all of the bugs should be worked out of the interface except for a small glitch (left adjustment) in Internet Explorer v6.0 and Opera v8.2 also experiences a font adjustment flaw in some configurations. The site configuration is also optimized for users running at 1280 x 1024. However, this latest revision also corrects several long-standing bugs with the previous site when running at higher resolutions. As of today, all Phoronix.com pages should be synced up with the new site layout, and every page should be in working order. Some areas of the site, however, will experience a few additional tweaks and modifications throughout the end of the week. However, we also invite feedback from our readers as well as any display problems you may have experienced when viewing the website (contact page). For reference here is the intended interface for this new layout.
